Those Who Ignore History

I winced, watching her.

Her face—once serene, now raw with emotion—was marred by tear tracks that never fully fell. The droplets froze against her cheeks, catching the light like tiny glass scars. She wiped them away slowly, not with delicacy, but with the grit of someone who couldn't afford to be seen grieving.

"I'd rather be the final Archivist," she whispered, her voice hoarse with restraint, "than let this grand library die in frost."

She looked away, the weight of it bearing down.

"How does the world end?" she asked. "With a bang? Or a whimper? If I had my way…" her knuckles whitened around the strap of her book, "it'd be a bang. Not this. Not silence."

I nodded. There wasn't anything else to say. She was hurting. That much was plain. But she was also resolved. And that made her dangerous—to the Tale, to the cold, to anything that dared to let this place rot into oblivion.

The path forward was clear.

We would drown this frozen library in color once more—even if that color had to be scarlet.

We walked.

Hall by hall, page by page, we pressed forward into the story's marrow. The snow thickened in some places, but in others, it lifted as if retreating from us. I wasn't sure whether to be comforted by that—or unnerved.

Whenever I encountered a book that hovered, open and singing in the air, frozen mid-thought like a throat caught in mid-scream, I didn't hesitate. I aimed Lunarias, and let the starlight fly.

Thunk.

Another book, pierced. Frozen verses shattered mid-stanza.

Falias flinched every time.

"They'll recover," she muttered, trying to hide the tremble in her voice. "Unlike the lives we've lost, the books can be restored. As long as there's no water damage, they can be transcribed again."

"I know," I said quietly. "But the songs they're singing, Falias... they're not prayers. They're funeral dirges. And I've already lived through too many."

She nodded, a flicker of guilt in her eyes. She couldn't argue. Not here. Not now.

The next corridor was narrower, but even more bitterly cold. The very air clawed at our lungs with every breath, and it wasn't long before we heard it again—the groaning, the hollow moans, the dragging limbs of those who should've never risen.

We paused behind a broken archway, shielding ourselves from view. The sound was closer this time. Louder. Wet.

Then it emerged.

A two-headed man. Or rather, what was left of one.

One head was stripped of all humanity, frostbitten to the bone. The lips were gone, the eyes hollowed out like sockets gouged in ice. The second head murmured unintelligibly, its jaw broken, moving with jerky, painful spasms. His flesh was pale blue and tight, frost having ripped the color from his skin until it looked like a puppet stretched over glass.

I drew in a breath through clenched teeth.

Mana pooled at my fingertips, forming starlight between them. With a flick, I summoned a shimmering arrow, drawing the tension into my limbs, into my stance, into purpose.

Breathe.

I nocked the arrow.

Breathe.

I held it, waiting for the pulse of the thing's movement.

Release.

The starlight screamed through the air, a comet streaking through the frost, hitting the thrall square in its chest. There was no burst of blood—only light. Pure and unrelenting.

The arrow detonated on impact.

A shockwave of brilliant, prismatic light erupted outward, scattering across the icy hall in a cascade of color. Like a stained-glass window shattered in reverse, the shards reformed into dancing echoes of heat. Beautiful. Vibrant. Alive.

The creature slumped. Silent.

The frost no longer held it upright.

"Goodbye," I whispered.

He wasn't an Archivist. Not like Falias. His robes were different. A different weave. Older, maybe? But still unmistakably important. Reverent.

I turned toward her.

"Falias. I've been thinking. Where are the Librarians?"

She blinked, startled. "What do you mean?"

"Each library sector has one, right? A Librarian. Mine was Vanitas. Surely there's someone else in here who holds that role? Can't we reach out to them? Call for help?"

She didn't answer.

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Not right away.

Then—she looked at the corpse.

She pointed.

Tears froze midstream on her cheeks again. This time, she didn't wipe them.

"That was his left hand," she whispered, voice cracking. "Gorvek. He was the Left Hand of the Librarian of The Last Night. I was the right. We managed the cycles. Catalogued the stories. Kept the Tale whole. Only Danatallion can name a true Librarian, but Gorvek—he… he was next in line."

She turned to face me fully, and there was no hiding the anguish in her eyes.

"He's gone. And the Librarian… she disappeared years ago. When the frost first set in, she went searching for the narrative core to restore it. She never came back."

I frowned, a sick weight forming in my gut.

"So… who's left?"

"You," she said simply.

"What?"

"You're the Custodian now. Gorvek named you before he fell. Gave you the seal. You hold the right of inheritance. That means you carry Danatallion's authority here. You have the library's will—its defenses. Its final judgment."

I stared at her, dumbfounded. "That's… I'm not qualified—"

"No one ever is," she snapped. "Not for this. Not when a Tale falls apart."

We were quiet again.

The frost thickened around us like it was listening. As if the very ice had heard the truth spoken aloud.

"I'm not trying to be a hero," I said finally.

"I'm not asking you to be," Falias replied. "I'm asking you to be a reader. One willing to finish the chapter… or start a new one."

The library trembled.

A constant waning force that whistled a wind that sounded like a cackling howl mixed with bells. Along with hundreds and hundreds of steps.

"What is the Library of Last Night?" I asked, glancing over at Falias as we moved through the brittle halls of frost and silence.

She paused. Her eyes—usually kaleidoscopic and vibrant—suddenly turned a flat, glowing white. Completely devoid of color, like moonlight striking untouched snow.

"Err… User Alexander Duarte-Alizade is Custodian. User has the right to query," she replied, voice stripped of tone and warmth—hollow, mechanical, devoid of soul.

The cold air tightened around us as my skin crawled. Then, just as suddenly as it began, her eyes dimmed and the opaline brilliance returned. Her features softened again, mouth curling into a sheepish smile.

"Sorry. That happens sometimes," she muttered. "Administrative override responses. Part of the binding—occupational hazard."

I didn't know what to say to that. So I just gave her a raised eyebrow.

"Okay," she continued, brushing past it like someone trying to ignore a muscle spasm. "To answer your question: the Library of Last Night is… well, this. Where we are right now. It's one of the sectors of Danatallion's Halls. You already know the Halls are massive—maybe infinite—and split into thousands of thematic libraries, all of which can operate independently."

"Thousands?" I asked, looking around at the unending shelves. "I thought it was a metaphor."

She shook her head solemnly. "No metaphor. And not just thousands—thousands known. There could be more. Forgotten ones. Hidden ones. Tales lost to time or sealed for good reason. Some are living archives. Some are realms unto themselves. But here… here is the one we call the Library of Last Night."

Her voice lowered, reverent and tired.

"This is the Hall of Forgotten Mythologies. Belief systems that no longer have worshippers. Deities whose final names were whispered by the last dying mouth. Parables from worlds that no longer spin. This place houses stories from civilizations swallowed whole. Memories without mourners."

I exhaled. "So, myths from dead worlds?"

She nodded. "Myths from dead everything."

"And what do you mean by 'swallowed?'" I asked, following the thread she dropped like a hook.

She hesitated. Just a moment—but it was enough.

"Swallowed by the Abyssal Chaos," she said, voice almost too quiet to hear. "And no, before you ask—no one knows what it is. We aren't allowed to speak of it much beyond that. I don't know any details myself. I only know it's the thing that erases entire stories—not kills them, erases. Even their echoes."

She looked at me, and her eyes were heavy—not with fear, but futility.

"I'm Soul Realm Two," she continued with a breath of dark amusement. "Same as you. Same as every book, every tale, every contracted Archivist or Librarian or servant in this sector. That's the ceiling here. The mythologies can't rise higher than the height of their own graves."

I took a moment to process that. This entire wing of Danatallion's Halls, an enormous sector of incredible size, and none of its residents—not even its head archivist—were permitted to grow stronger than Soul Realm Two. Whatever held them here, whatever laws governed them, were older and heavier than choice.

"We really need to abbreviate that," I said. "Library of Last Night is a mouthful."

Falias laughed. It was small, but real. The first warm sound in what felt like hours.

"We archivists just call it the library," she said, shrugging. "For us, it's the only one that matters. The others are theoretical luxuries."

I nodded, trying not to look at the ruined books that littered the ground beneath the frost.

"Okay… so what else can you tell me about it?" I asked. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"Oh, plenty," she said, stretching slightly, as if preparing for a lecture. "Naturally, we store mythologies, so many of the artifacts, environments, relics, and anomalies you see around us are the manifestations of half-believed ideas. Cultural remnants. Symbols whose meanings were lost even before their creators were. That's why sometimes a name you hear or a flame you touch seems to shift—you aren't wrong. It is changing. Because the stories are still bleeding into one another. The barriers between tales are thinner here."

She gestured at the icy stag horns that crowned the archway we passed under.

"Those antlers were once part of a forest god from a world that spun backward," she said. "Now they're a frozen fixture in a hallway no one visits."

She sighed. "We try to catalog what we can. But the names change. The symbols drift. Sometimes the songs of the stories shift mid-stanza. If that happens, let me know. The database needs updates."

I blinked. "Database?"

She turned to look at me.

"You're the Custodian," she said, clearly surprised I hadn't put that together. "You have access to the living record. All Custodians do. Danatallion's libraries are sentient, in part. That's why your presence here has weight. You move the story just by standing in it."

"Right," I said slowly, narrowing my eyes. "Falias… are you… some kind of robot?"

She burst out laughing.

"No. No, not even close," she said, brushing a hand through her blue hair. "Though I understand the confusion. When you're bound by oath, magic, and metaphysical constraint all at once, it starts to make you… twitchy."

Her voice was softer now. "I'm not an automaton. I'm not a construct. I'm very much flesh and blood. My own, not borrowed. I was born here."

"And the scales?" I asked.

Her smile faded into something calmer. Proud, even.

"I'm a dragon," she said, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. "Isn't that obvious?"